The Source of Woo's The Killer

 Just as John Woo's Bullet in the Head is a very obvious remake of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (right down to its lighting setups), his The Killer is a less obvious remake of Teruo Ishii's An Outlaw and, of course, Melville's Le Samourai. I'd throw Nicholas Ray's truly amazing crime melodrama  They Live By Night into the fray also.


I've raved about Ishii before on this blog, usually having unreasonable cinematic orgasms about his freak-oriented material such as Horrors of Malformed Men, Love and Crime, and Orgies of Edo. But Ishii also directed thrillers, outrageous erotic comedies, and torture-themed epics.

An Outlaw, with Ken Takakura, is an Ishii thriller. Takakura plays a killer (very well) contracted to take out a scumbag; turns out the scumbag is a good guy. Angered by this betrayal, the killer sets out to expose the maggot-infested filth behind the ruse. Along the way, he becomes attracted to an innocent girl, helps a pretty prostitute with tuberculosis, and finds he shares a common sense of morality with a cop. At one point, he and the cop exchange gunfire with their common enemy.

Sound familiar? It screams familiar.

Yes, it's The Killer without the heavy stylization, but with the doubledecker trams and visually spectacular exploitation of Hong Kong's Victoria Peak. Mr. Woo must have been quite a fan of the film.

Thankfully, Ishii's bizarre trademarks rupture the film's surface now and then like welcome blisters. An old woman's wonderful facial scar (or is it a tattoo?) is a classic touch. Also true to Ishii is a bloody brilliant scene in which our hero saves a woman from vomiting on her own blood by deep kissing her and sucking the blood from her throat. It's super erotic, loving, and grotesque at the same time. I was in heaven!

I've waited eons to see this film and I was not disappointed.

Another triumph from Toei, the people who would one day bring you Battle Royale.

The Bunny Game

 The Bunny Game is a variation on a well-trodden scenario, but it's elevated somewhat by a stark sense of realism, a solid black and white grade, some inventive editing, and an engaging lead performance.

Recently banned in the UK due, no doubt, to its blending of violence (physical and psychological) and hardcore sexual imagery, it's a worthy addition to a growing sub-genre that is often labeled "torture porn". Patronizing labels undermine the merits of individual works, creating the impression that these films are as generic as porn loops (actually, even porn loops are not as generic as they seem).

 Cinema and literature have a rich history of stories involving the capture and ill treatment of human beings for sundry purposes. We can go way back to 1932's The Most Dangerous Game to locate a narrative based on a madman's treatment of compromised humanity. John Fowles' The Collector (film and book)  traversed these streets, too, with great success.

Contemporary titles of this ilk such as the August Underground movies, Hostel (I,II,III), Captured, Scrapbook, Mum and Dad, Martyrs, Seed, and Senseless owe as much to Japanese cinema of the 60's, 70's, and 80's as they do to looser Western influences.

Many of Koji Wakamatsu films such as Go Go Second Time Virgin ('69), Diary of a Japanese Rapist ('67),  The Embryo Hunts in Secret ('66) and The Man Who Assaulted 13 People aka Serial Rapist ('78)  re-drew the parameters of international cinema and were later followed by works sharing the visceral (though not the political) themes of the director.

  Titles now familiar to us such as Captured for Sex 2, Wife To Be Sacrificed, Tumbling Doll of Flesh, Lolita Vibrator Torture, Please Rape Me Once More, Assault Jack the Ripper, and the first two Guinea Pig movies owe much to the works of Wakamatsu and directors such as Kinya Ogawa,  Mamoru Watanabe, and Hiroshi Mukai. A new generation of cinematic explorers including Hisayaso Sato, Genji Nakamura, and Banmei Takahashi followed these taboo busters.

It would not be accurate to categorize the films of these Japanese directors as "torture porn", despite the fact that much of their work was extreme and confronting.

As in any genre, there are good and bad ambassadors...

 



Which brings us full circle to Adam Rehmeier's The Bunny Game.

As noted above, the scenario is well-trodden, but the treatment is fresher than some. A prostitute (Bunny), played with extraordinary commitment by Rodleen Getsic, is having a shit of a week. The blowjob she performs in the opening scene seems typical of her day, as does her mean-spirited client. After servicing a variety of vile johns, Bunny is left high and dry when a client rips her off. At a low ebb, it's not surprising that she agrees to jump into a truck with 'Hogg' (Jeff R. Renfro). Her decision is clearly a mistake from the get-go, and how this plays out makes up the bulk of the movie.

 Interesting choice of villain here, and clearly influenced by Samuel R. Delany's searing novel, Hogg ('69), a highly controversial and much-banned work (reviewed on this blog long ago). Delany's novel is focused on a perverted homosexual rapist and killer whose average day includes molesting a young hitchhiker, driving with shit-filled pants, and subjecting everybody he meets to his filth and psychotic violence. Only recently, the character's name was also used in  Adam Mason's Pig ('10) , a similar film that failed all the tests this one passes.

Although The Bunny Game has its fair share of sexual abuse and mental torture, Rehmeier and his artistic cohorts don't just subject us to to variations of the same sex act. Using an inventive editing style, the film explores Hogg's addiction to the orgasmic euphoria previous crimes created for him, and we're shown his obsessive reliving of the crimes using  garments and other objects he's souvenired. The part memory plays for this psychopath and his fetishizing of the tactile adds a layer to the narrative that separates it from swill such as Pig.

Jeff R. Renfro (Hogg), a real truck driver who donated his truck to the cause, is amateur in the best way here because he plays it straight and real. With his performance married to Getsic's, The Bunny Game is an uncomfortable slice of authentic vice in which the line between reality and fiction is difficult to discern. It needs to be noted that Getsic's performance is the primary reason for experiencing this film, and I hope to see more of her (so to speak).

It was a wise move to establish Bunny's character with well directed and cut montages of her at work. The film's stark, black and white imagery, and doom-laden tone recalled, for me, Noboru Tanaka's Secret Chronicle: She Beast Market ('79) (reviewed on this blog), a brilliant Japanese marriage of the erotic and, yes, Italian neo-realism. It was also presented  in black and white.

Until recently, The Bunny Game has been available uncut on PAL dvd. In the last few weeks, a company called Autonomy Pictures (its principals being Derek Curl, David Gregory, and Lewis Tice)  has picked up US rights to the movie, and will bow it in July, 2012.

Cinema As Punishment

 

     Unavailable on video for a long time, Cornel Wilde's No Blade of Grass finally goes public courtesy of Warner Archives. The film opens with a montage of environmental disasters that, apparently, caused the citizens of the world to riot and abandon civility. Although the logical steps towards such a catastrophe are vague here, you'd better go with it if you expect to survive the rest of the movie. We follow a small group of people who are heading out of strife-torn London to take refuge on a farm in the country. Along the way, some female members of the group get raped, the males shoot at each other, and a gang of outlaw bikers turn up to generate dramatic interest. Oh, yeah, and one bloke gets stuck with a wife who's more passionate about flashing her tits at the other cast members than surviving the disaster.

     I first read about No Blade of Grass in Philip Strick's Science Fiction Movies and remained curious about the often-published image of Viking-helmeted marauders on bikes.

     It took me until recently to conclude that the bikers in this movie are a bunch of idiots, and purely on board to break up the monotony. In the most pointless sequence, the bikers spot a group of armed civilians and decide to ride near them in a threatening manner. In fact, they ride in a circle so the civilians can shoot them off their bikes. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of genuinely silly behavior on the loose in this odd science fiction mash-up.

     The film has developed a reputation for its explicit violence, a reputation that's undeserved. Yes, lots of people get shot at, and there are a few decent motorcycle stunts, but this '70's effort is neither shocking nor particularly interesting. A terribly unhelpful editing decision here is to include what can only be described as flash-forwards. Now and then, we get tinted frames of red or green prior to more tinted shots of events we haven't seen yet. The colored frames are meant to be some sort of red alert, but they simply serve to undercut any dramatic surprises this film has in store. And it never had many in the first place.

     The film must have cost a pretty penny to make. The cast list is considerable, and there are dozens of remote rural settings in addition to impressive riot sequences in London. Unfortunately, the script is obvious and heavy-handed, with Wilde piling on shots of dead animals and chimneys spewing pollution to make his point a hundred times. Although Nigel Davenport acquits himself well as the group leader, even he is betrayed by dialog lacking subtlety.

    Also lacking subtlety is a 'No Blade of Grass' folk song that is placed over the opening and end titles. Unless you're a musical masochist, you'll give this charmless ditty a wide berth.

     I wouldn't advise against seeing this cinematic relic as it is a curiosity, but I would park your high expectations at the door.

     If you really want to see how the world will end, watch Punishment Park, Peter Watkin's masterpiece now on Blu-Ray.

 

     Speaking of punishment, this is it!   

     Although I'm no fan of contemporary, so-called "extreme" (read: cheesy) cinema (Machine Girl, etc.), I gave Hard Revenge Milly a look because someone recommended it. I shouldn't have bothered. A girl takes revenge on a bunch of guys and gals who've raped her, killed her husband, and burnt her newborn baby to a crisp. Sounds like exploitation heaven, doesn't it? It's not. The over-the-top acting cremates the drama; the gore, inspired by Ichii the Killer, is silly; and the villains are screaming buffoons. Three minutes in, I already knew this was shit. There is a sequel, but I don't care. Keep it away from me.

Rex Miller's Quality Legacy

 

Not sure how I ended up with this 'preview edition' of Slob, but  I love the Ellison quote that concludes with "It pulls a plow, this writing".

Unfortunate that Signet didn't use it on their first official printing in '87 (edition below).  Not hard to guess why they went with someone else's quote, though. 

 

The late Miller had a few years in the spotlight with his 'Chaingang' series of books (five in all) and a handful of semi-related novels.

'Chaingang' was Daniel Bunkowski (any relation to Bukowski?), a filthy, fat serial killer. The series focused on a Chicago detective (Jack Eichord) and his exhaustive search for him.   

 

Marketed in some circles as pure, gory horror, the books read more like bloodier-than-usual crime thrillers, and are, for the most part, well written, briskly paced, and buoyed by rich and fruity dialog exchanges.

Slob is broken up into approximately ten sections with names such as 'Jack and the Queen of Hearts' and 'Jack Eichord Meets the Lynch Family'. It's a format that works.

 

 

Frenzy, while not a 'Chainsaw' book, featured Eichord again in hot pursuit of killers and pornographers.

Like much fiction centered on the porn biz, the milieu is exaggerated and hysterical. He writes about the kiddie porn biz like it's organized in some sort of official way, and every pornographer is a rapist, scam artist, or personification of brutality.

From my own experiences on the fringes of various avenues of entertainment, I've met more pieces of shit making PG-rated movies than porn. For the most part, the porn people have been straight shooters.

Naturally, it serves the drama to tarnish porn people with a sleazy brush, so I don't fault Miller for his choices.

 

Note the affectionate review (below) from veteran fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley. She's not the type of writer I'd expect such a quote from. Still, good on her for stepping outside her comfort zone. 

Slice, Chaingang, Savant, and Butcher completed the 'Chaingang' series in '94.

Other notable Miller titles are Iceman and Profane Men, a favorite of mine.

Australia's Rich and Revolting Criminal History

You wouldn't know it from watching bland Aussie movies such as Australia or The Man From Snowy River, but the Land Down Under has a rich and gloriously revolting history of true crime.

If you've seen the recent Animal Kingdom, The Boys, Snowtown, or the Blue Murder miniseries, you'll have some sense of the convict colony's lurid past and present. If any of the above have moistened your appetite for Aussie vice, I suggest you line up for these unbelievably lurid, stark, and graphic accounts of dozens of hideous, fascinating crimes.

 

Originally produced for network TV and the Aussie equivalent of America's Investigation ID, and hosted by a well known ex-'60 Minutes' journalist, these recreations of crimes that shook the Land Down Under caused considerable controversy for their graphic nature and upset more than a few victim' families and friends.

Personally, I think the series is a revelation, probably the best snapshot ever of a country's history of criminal behavior. A country under the Queen, mind you!

My problem with the recent feature film Snowtown (which I did like, by the way, and have reviewed here) was that it avoided key events of the crimes themselves and neglected to address the 'Bodies in the Barrels' aspect of the case. Fortunately, CIA's (Crime Investigation Australia) take on the case (made before the Snowtown film) leaves no stone unturned and captures the lurid "thrill" of murder the killers experienced. And this is the key to the series' success.

CIA doesn't whitewash its cases or spare us the gory details. It also does an excellent job of conveying the sweet juice of vice that criminals become addicted to. It is this  approach that, I feel, offends so many people. Producer Graham McNeice and director Gary Deans are to be congratulated for delivering a balls-to-the-wall true crime series that brutally injects us into frightening macro worlds of terror, lust, greed, racism, misogyny, and bigotry.  This is awfully scary stuff. 

Snowtown isn't the only story recently given both the CIA and feature treatment. The above disk contains a crime known in Australia as 'The Anita Cobby Murder'. Cobby was taken from a train station and brutally raped and murdered by three brothers. This episode can be watched in conjunction with Rowan Woods' powerful The Boys as, narratively, it is a sequel. The events of The Boys (one of the greatest crime dramas ever made) occur prior to the rape of Cobby. Woods' film ends with the brothers watching Cobby from their car. 

 

 

There is no reason for any horror, drama, or true crime fan to not have these in his or her collection. They are the duck's guts! For reasons unfathomable to me, the DVD's are particularly difficult to acquire and appear to have had very limited pressings in Australia. Only recently did I finally get my hands on the five disks comprising Volume I; there are three volumes so far.  

Ebay is a good place to start you're search for these if you're not living in Australia; even if you are living Australia, you'll have a tough time finding the first two volumes in stores. On a recent trip, I turned up empty-handed, but I did manage to pick up the just-released third volume.    

I can not overstate the value of this series to anybody interested in the human mind or curious about a side of the Australian psyche not often seen beyond its shores.

Australians do have a peculiar relationship with their criminals. Having virtually canonized bushranger killer 'Ned Kelly' in a series of films and a couple of TV manifestations, the public have recently lined up at pubs to hear the real Chopper Read ruminate on his life of crime. The likable Chopper, whose antics were immortalized in the film of the same name, maintains a healthy profile in Melbourne, and can be seen judging film festivals or making guest appearances at art openings. 

 

 

The Crime Investigation Australia series is bloody pulp perfection. 

Get a big motherfucking load of it. 

These discs are PAL, so you'll need a multi-system DVD player to view them.

If you haven't already invested in a multi-zone Blu-Ray and DVD player,

you're crazier than Mark David Chapman.

From Hammer to Horror

Halls of Horror began life as House of Hammer, one of Britain's premier horror magazines. The initial focus was on Hammer and comic adaptations of the studio's work. Eventually, the scope of the title was broadened to include horror from other studios and independents.

I always enjoyed the input of Tony Crawley, a correspondent who reported on horror and fantasy from the genre's far-flung corners of the globe. In a sense, reading Crawley was like getting updates of Phil Hardy's 'Aurum Film Encyclopedia' (the Horror volume).  

 

The above ad mat is an example of rare poster art the magazine often published. Much of this art did not appear on video sleeves, but was used by producers to sell the film to distributors at festivals such as AFM, Cannes, and MIFED.

 

This piece of Unhinged art is really atmospheric and beautiful. Shame the film possessed none of its mystery.

 

This Vampire Lovers ad mat is included in this issue to support a career article on actress Ingrid Pitt.

The name on the fan letter above will be familiar to fans of the book 'Killing For Culture', one of my favorite genre film books of all time on the subject of Mondo/'Death Film'.

Written in '93 just prior to the explosion of internet access to atrocities beyond imagining a decade earlier, the Kerekes/David Slater book is ripe for a follow-up, and I sincerely hope the authors take up the task.

 Another book begging for a serious update is David Hebditch and the late Nick Anning's monumental tome on the global porn industry, Porn Gold. Published in '88, a few years prior to the arrival of on-line pornography, the landscape so vividly drawn in the book has changed dramatically in the twenty-five years since; an update would not lack for material.

Kerekes mentions Ramsey Campell in his letter, and I agree with his sentiments. Campbell has always provided an astute veteran's view of the genre. In this issue's 'Campbell's Column', the horror writer revisits James Herbert's The Fog, a book he initially publicly criticized for its violence, fearing it was inappropriate for Herbert's large schoolboy readership.

I was a schoolboy when I devoured the scene Campbell refers to (penises are lopped off in a school gymnasium with garden shears), but I don't remember feeling anything but excitement and glee at the images his writing evoked.

Campbell concludes:

"I believe there is no worthwhile reason to write fiction other than to try to tell the truth. Herbert does, and never seeks to hide the contradictions of his personality. More power to him."

Well said, Ramsey.   

The Cinefantastique

Frederick S. Clarke's Cinefantastique magazine, launched in the early 70's, one of the greatest ever, was inspired by Eric Losfeld's midi/minuit Fantastique, which debuted in the 60's.

Losfeld's magazine (entirely in French) was the first in publishing history to cover the genre seriously. Clarke picked up the baton in the U.S. and produced dozens of stunning issues (with spectacular cover art) devoted to little known luminaries such as Hans J. Salter, unseen cult films (at the time) such as The Wicker Man, and directors such as David Cronenberg and George Pal.

 

 

For mine, the magazine became less interesting when the genre itself became more mainstream (ironically). Clarke's double issue devoted to Star Wars, then subsequent issues devoted to fare such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, while extraordinary for their penetrative examination of these cultural phenomena, were indicative of a new, more commercial direction for the magazine, a direction that saw more marginalized genre films receiving less attention. 

 

After years of struggling to pay the bills, it's understandable that Clarke embraced what sold. Only an independently wealthy man could have chosen to ignore the call of commerce.

Although the magazine did eventually die, leaving an almost unrecognizable corpse, Clarke's spirit of affording the genre some serious consideration endured with magazines such as Tim Lucas's Video Watchdog, Richard Klemensen's Little Shoppe of Horrors, Gary J. Svehla's Midnight Marquee, and the French L'Ecran Fantastique.

Even though there is a deluge of information on the genre these days, there is still something very special about something you can hold in your hand that is dedicated to in-depth analysis of it. Print possesses a permanence, an authority, a sincerity that data on a computer screen does not.

I treasure my collections of these wonderful magazines, and still feel the texture of the connection they make to my childhood. On Saturday mornings, I'd catch the 'Red Rattler' train into Melbourne's CBD, bound up the station steps, flee into the busy street, and sprint four blocks to Space Age Books, a titan of destinations that was more like a church than a bookshop. It offered me the safety of a church, and there was reverence for that which I held dear.

Entering Space Age Books and its kaleidoscope of wonders was akin to arriving on another planet, a planet where my kind were welcome, where flights of imagination were encouraged, and where our hearts were consoled with our minds.

These magazines still smell of that long deceased bookstore, a brick and glass monument to dreaming.